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I watched several videos on a Combine Harvester's inner workings (lemmy.world)
submitted 10 months ago by to c/science_memes@mander.xyz
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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/32524920

I watched several videos on a Combine Harvester's inner workings and I still don't understand how this thing works.

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[–] 47 points 10 months ago (3 children)

They continuously improved on every single step in the process. What you see now are the descendants of many generations of harvesters.

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  • [–] 22 points 10 months ago (2 children)

    This reminded me of a mini documentary on helping subsistence farmers in India. Since the farms were small and irregular, they couldn't recommend powered harvesters to be shared. They basically squatted down and used sickles. It was a whole family affair as kids as small as 3 were needed to harvest quickly and get it to market.

    They introduced scythes with baskets to catch and softly drop the grain or whatever to the side.

    this isn't that documentary, but it does show the slow going of using a sickle at first. It then shows how much faster the scythe is.

    The documentary also showed how some were reluctant as the kids were free and basically the sickle was how it had always been done. So they had contests of 5 farmers against one guy on the scythe and a kid picking up the wheat and putting it on a cart. I think it was 30 meters long. The scythe had the job finished and helping the kid finish putting the grain in the cart before the other farmers had gotten halfway.

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  • [–] 4 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 child)

    Scythes require more specific wind and moisture conditions compared to sickles (as do combines), but they do save a ton of work. My favorite scythe fact is that there is an even faster but more dangerous version called the Flemish Scythe, that is one-handed. From "The Scythe Book":

    ...John Gerard, in his seven- teenth-century Herball, recorded an accident wherein the mower:

    made a wound to the bones, and withall very large and wide, and also with great effusion of blood; the poore man crept upon this herbe (Clownes Wound wort or All-heale), which he bruised with his hands, and tied a great quantity of it unto the wound with a piece of his shirt, which presently stanched the bleeding, and ceased the paine, insomuch that the poore man presently went to his dayes work againe, and so did from day to day, without resting one day until he was perfectly whole, which was accomplished in a few dayes.

    Fucking hardcore.

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